Materials: Story Cards, sharpies, paper, scissor, corrugated cardboard, pipe cleaners, tape, toothpicks, a visible timer. (If time allows, the perseverance video)

Instructions: Divide students into groups of 3-4 students. Give a story card to each group. Define design principle, have students read their story cards in groups, and ask students to pick 2 design principles for their user, and 1 that reflects their team as a design unit. Share whole-class. Then, define iteration, and explain to students that they will be building 4 iterations of their design using different materials (3-5 minutes for each iteration).

1. Draw a Chair: Using the provided sharpies, draw three sketches of a chair on a piece of paper.
2. Cut a Chair: Using only your scissors and the sheet of corrugated cardboard, make a standing representation of your chair
3. Bend a Chair: Using as many or as few of the provided pipe cleaners, make an expression of your chair.
4. Assemble a Chair: Using tape and toothpicks, build your chair.

Share (potential questions to facilitate discussion):

• What was it like to build your chairs using the design principles you identified?
• What was it like to create different iterations of your design?
• What did you change along the way? What did you learn from your prototypes?
• Did anyone get stuck at any point? What was that like? What did you do to get unstuck?
• Which material did you enjoy working with the most? Why?
• Which material did you like the least? Why?
• Which material best expresses the essence of the chair your drew?

Wrap-up: Briefly introduce students the next design challenge: building a programmable machine that can overcome obstacles.

SESSION 1: You’re going to make something amazing, something you’re going to start on it right now. This project is going to look, smell, taste, feel different than anything that you have done before. Working with your design team, you're going to create a programmable machine that can move around obstacles. Look all around you. Carefully. We are surrounded by things that people created. Creators, also designers, go through a cycle of creation, a cycle of design. Watch how it works... Show The Launch Cycle video (on left side).

As you're watching, jot down some observations. This could be anything you notice about this project.

We're going to follow a similar path together.

SESSION 2: Listen to your audience: You are going to create a robot for an audience. You need to create a robot that your classmates will actually want to play. So, try and keep that in mind as much as possible when you start planning things out. You want to make sure you know what your audience wants, right? So, how do you figure out this out? How do you what they would enjoy? One of the options is a survey. So, working as a team, you will create a survey for your classmates. Think about the types of questions you want to ask. What do you need to know about your audience before you create a robot for them?

Create a survey:

STEP 1: Generate Questions (PARTNERSHIP)- As a group, create a list of questions you would like to ask your audience. Feel free to use the sentence stems if you are struggling with what to ask. Each member should have each question listed in his or her interactive notebook.

STEP 2: Divide up the Questions (INDIVIDUAL)- Next, divide up the questions so that each student gets one question. This will be your individual question.

STEP 3: Make it a Multiple Choice Question (INDIVIDUAL)- Individually, turn your survey questions it into a multiple choice survey question. Your survey question should at least have five options. You may create a table like the one on the right, or create your survey in another tool, such as Google Forms.

STEP 4: Create a bar graph or a circle graph showing your results. You may draw it in your notebook, or use any of the tools available in our Digital Toolbox.

STEP 5: Share your results with your design team. What trends do you notice? What will that mean in terms of creating an engaging project?

Explore your materials: Take some time to explore your items. Just play around with them. What are some of the possibilities that you see? What are some things that might come in handy? If you want to hold onto your thinking, you may add any observations, notes, or ideas of how you might want to use these items in a robot. You might draw a picture, make a web, or make a list.

Reflection:

1. What is one question you still have?

2. What is one thing you learned?

3. What do you hope to do next time we meet?

Now that you have a clear picture of both the design challenge and your audience, you’re going to create a set of questions you need to ask before planning out your project. Think about it this way: What kinds of questions would someone have about your robot? Think about all the questions that they will need to know? List your questions in your notebook.

As a team, go around and share your questions. As you add your questions to chart paper, individually add any additional questions that your group came up with in your notebooks.

REFLECT: Review other groups’ questions. Add any questions you find relevant.

Now play with your materials! Explore them.